God Bless the Child

I’m painting again….

Seems like I’ve spent more time painting in my life than most folks: painting as in primer and enamel, Rustoleum and latex, barns and gates and secondhand furniture.  Walls and wallpaper (don’t judge), ceilings and cement.  Scenery, signs, one 1966 Chevy pickup (construction orange) and perhaps my finest work, the big red geranium in a clay pot that graced both the false front on a long gone greenhouse and an even longer gone Ford three speed delivery van.

 

This propensity to paint is just one way I am my father’s daughter.  The only question is whether this craving to cover with color is a result of nature or nurture.  We earned our stripes the old fashioned way: no paint brush until until the target was scraped clean or wire-brushed free of flakes and rust.  My sister and I served at least a seven years’ apprenticeship painting farm gates and ourselves with gallon after gallon of barn red from Orscheln’s.   By nature, these children of the Depression and wartime were thrifty and fixed what broke, a task made easier by my mom’s talent with a sewing machine and my father’s engineer mindset.  By nurture, their children picked up sticks, pulled weeds, painted peeling farm buildings….and still do all of the above.  I shared with both my folks an appreciation for the timeworn and a desire to resurrect and put back to work stuff with some miles left to go.

Me, painting the numbers as high up as I wanted to lean

My dad, painting at the peak of the Red Barn roof

That's me, painting the numbers on the big red barn lots and lots of years ago.  In this picture, I've got a lot of rungs in front of me and I'm feeling pretty secure up high. Full disclosure, I did some of the painting on the gable sides of that barn, as high as that ladder could reach.  It was terrifying; I even curled my toes inside my shoes in an effort to make myself one with that ladder.  Exhibit two: my father, two ladders up on the steeply angled roof of the tallest barn in Moniteau county.  Lightning bolt high.  Once, on a vacation in South Dakota, he offered to race us to the top of a fire tower.  Laura scampered up ahead, as nimble as a squirrel on a high wire.  I made it about three flights before freezing up and retreating to join my mother on the ground.  When it came to heights, I was definitely my mother's daughter.

By nature, my father was orderly and tidy...I’d say almost to a fault, but that would be accounting using my standards of organization.  My mother’s best friend says my mom would hurry home from a visit to make sure the messes on the counter, or table, or other remains of the day were shoved under a counter or into a closet or otherwise cleared from the deck.  This story makes me laugh, being as picking up stacks of books, photos, mail and magazines and transporting them upstairs far from the beaten path of any company is my chosen way to deal with clutter. This habit is just one of the ways I’m my mother’s daughter. Over time, piles of lists and papers and catalogs accumulated on my parents’ kitchen table too, proving that even my father’s sense of order was no match for Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The haphazard little girl learned discipline primarily through practice.  For much of my life, music was the strongest bond and common language between my father and me. He was a good teacher; I learned to listen to the sound I was making, to formulate an ear for what a clarinet should be...based on my dad’s clear bright tone, not the assortment of squeaks and groans in our school band. In music, he was patient with my mistakes, counting effort and practice to the good, but that didn’t keep me from quaking every week when it came time to test my exercises. My life is forever richer for the bond forged with my dad and the knowledge and appreciation of music heard and music performed.

My father was witty, quick with a quip or retort.  I wished I could be.  He was the sort of man one listened to.  My mother was kind, a patient and sympathetic ear during our one long distance conversation a week during college, or while she cooked in her farm kitchen and I chattered from the table.  In her later years, she was quiet, and I missed our conversations, though she was still perfectly happy to hear me talk about gardens and kids and loved to look at the pictures I took of home and farm or travels far away. Now I have stacks and stacks of the photo albums she constructed, reminders of a curious mind and an artist’s eye with the lens. I grew up with houseplants in every room and a camera bag on every outing; those habits are second nature not just for my sister and me, but deeply ingrained in her grandchildren as well.

What do we remember of our childhood?  I watched two people do their jobs: my father as the breadwinner and spiritual leader and my mother as caregiver, homemaker, and partner.  But these separate jobs were overshadowed by what they did together, which makes Clint Black’s lyrics oh so true….

“The way we work together is what sets our love apart

So closely that you can't tell where I end and where you start.”